Labour Left Trial episode: The 1980s Left: the Brighton Labour Briefing legacy

Labour Hub is supporting the launch of the Labour Left Podcast which will appear on all your favourite podcast providers’ platforms and as a video on YouTube.  Bryn Griffiths, a regular Labour Hub contributor, sets out below what it is all about and how you can get to listen to it. We started the trial episode by setting out our stall in the opening introduction.  “Are you desperate to kick out the Tories in 2024. Have you got behind every trade union dispute that has declared Enough is Enough? But despite your anger do you despair daily at Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party and his hostility to socialists? Are you angry about Labour’s lack of support for those such as refugees and the LGBTQ+ community who need our support the most? To know what you are against is a good start but it is not good enough we also need a strategy to rebuild a socialist left in British politics. If you share our anger and despair, we hope you will like the Labour Left Podcast produced in association with Labour Hub. By interviewing a wide range of socialists on the front line we plan to delve deep into what is wrong with British politics but most of all we want, to badly misquote Keir Starmer, to have a laser like focus on what we need to do to rebuild a mass socialist movement in British Politics. First up is a trial episode where we look at the history of Brighton Labour Briefing based on an earlier Labour Hub article.  We think the magazine was a rich seam of gold which the Labour Left can mine for lessons today. The trial episode is effectively a journey back into the Bennite 1980s to see what lessons, we can mine from our opposition to the Falklands War; the disastrous 1983 General Election; the Miners’ Great Strike of 1984 85; and, the Labour Left’s response to the Adams-McGuiness wing of the Irish Republican Movement”. You will also in the future be able to search for the Labour Left Podcast on your favourite podcast provider channels: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Castbox, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, and Stitcher. If when you have had a listen, you like what you hear please subscribe on YouTube or your favourite podcast channel so you can hear our future episodes. Hit like and most of all tell us what you think. Debate and argument are the lifeblood of the socialist movement so please get stuck in on social media! After our trial our first podcast proper will be an interview with our comrade Liz Davies who will talk about her experience as a dissenter in Blair’s New Labour.  We hope activists will learn a lot from her experience and be able to take what they learn into Starmer’s Party today. The podcast will be available on Saturday 6 October when we launch the podcast on the first day of Labour conference. The new podcast is brought to you by Bryn Griffiths, and Luke Robinson the podcast editor.  We are both activists in the labour movement, Momentum, and the World Transformed in North Essex. Bryn writes regularly for Labour Hub. You can follow Bryn on social media here https://linktr.ee/brynhgriffiths Labour Hub can be found here https://labourhub.org.uk/